Posted by bookstore-romeo 20 hours ago
I had to tell my AI to set up an MCP for "fetch while bypassing arXiv's rate limit" so that it doesn't burn 40k tokens looking for workarounds every time it wants to look at a paper and gets hit with a "sorry, meatbags only" wall.
Very annoying, given how relevant arXiv papers are for ML specifically, and how many of papers there are. Can't "human flesh search" through all of them to pick the relevant ones for your work, and they just had to insist on making it harder for AIs to do it too.
That is, it's not readily parseable, it really gives an insider term vibe - like this isn't for you if you don't already know what it means or how you should read or say it. It sort of reminds me of the overuse of latin and latinate terms generally in the old professions and, well, the academy.
Just always struck me as being somewhat at odds with the goal.
To me it's just a way to get out your work fast, so that there is already a trace of it on the Internets - nothing more and nothing less.
> That is, it's not readily parseable, it really gives an insider term vibe...
Isn't that normal with highly specialized research fields? I agree many papers could benefit from clearer wording, but working in a niche means you sometimes don't reach a broader audience
But I did justify and maybe to reword slightly, surely if one of the main drivers is opening up research, the brand name should be something that's less obscure and more accessible / understandable as to what it is on first sight?
Maybe arXiv evoking the word 'archive' with an ancient Greek twist does that for some, but it's clearly a bit cryptic for many, and if the point is to open up probably the brand should just be something much plainer.
Using a brand as a filter where you have to already know what it means to get it is exactly the opposite of what it's supposed to achieve.
Consider the most exclusive (successful) brands that exist. Even there, where exclusivity is a brand goal, none of them have this property of being obscure on first contact.
Its reasonable to have a tradeoff here to avoid cranks and now AI psychosis slop. You can still post on research gate and academia.edu or you own github page or webhosting.
The original service didn't even have a name, only a description, and it was amusingly hosted at xxx.lanl.gov. But LANL wasn't really interested in it, and the founder eventually left for Cornell. At that point, the service needed a domain name, but archive.org was already taken.
And besides, the name has Ancient Greek influences. A similar Latinate term might be something like "archive".
Isn't that actually kindof a good brand signal for a repo of very specialized papers? "Fun with learning" in comic sans wouldn't help credibility.
Google I'll grant you, though it's still pretty phonetic and easy to read. The other two not at all, they're incredibly well known instantaneously recognisable words.